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MAIMONIDES

“One only loves the Holy One blessed be He through the knowledge of Him. This love is commensurate to the knowledge. If the knowledge is little, the love will be little; and if the knowledge is great, the love will be great. Thus, it is imperative for a person to dedicate himself to understand and contemplate the wisdom and knowledge that inform him of his Creator.” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 10:6)

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On Divine Inspiration – Chapter 17

Now, this statement needs to be explained and clarified. We observe an astonishing phenomenon in the matter of the listening ear of the human intellect in regard to the words of the Living G_d. That is, Chassidus causes great intellectual excitement. Now, it cannot be said that this is because the concepts of this subject are deeper than concepts of other subjects, for there are other deep concepts of greater breadth.

We further observe empirically that one person’s intellect will become very excited when he hears Chassidus, whereas another will not become excited at all – similar to what was explained above on the matter of “listening from afar” in which the matter does not at all affect him, only that he accepts it as something true, as mentioned above. (He barely hears.)

At first glance, we could attribute this to proficiency in the service of the heart – this one serves with proficiency while the other does not. However, this is not the case, because a person could be G_d fearing and pure in his service with all his heart, but in this he has no talent to listen at all. All this is known and fully tested.

This being the case, we can only say that this comes from the potentiality of the soul itself – that it possesses Divine potential and that when it is activated, it is defined as Divine excitement – that is, this is caused solely due to the G_dliness of the soul. Therefore, when he hears an aspect of G_dliness, the G_dly soul will become excited with Divine excitement solely because of the source it was hewn from. However, in this there are separate levels. There are those who are only from the aspect of Nefesh. Such a person will, therefore, not become as excited as someone from the aspect of Ruach, who becomes more excited and so on.